'Bertie & Me'

Billie is two years older than Bertie, and Billie says she always, always picked on her little sister. And always bossed her around. And forever denied everything.

"It pleases her no end that I've finally owned up to it," Billie chuckled, explaining that it's obvious in her new book -- "Bertie and Me: Kids on a Ranch" -- that she and Bertie "fussed" at each other, each one trying to outdo the other.

In her book -- her first ever -- Billie Lee Snyder Thornburg, of North Platte, tells about the (harmless and playful) sibling rivalry that marked the girls' days on a ranch in the Nebraska Sandhills in the early 1900s.

Billie and Bertie, their sister, Nellie, and their brother, Miles, grew up on the Snyder family's Ten-Bar Ranch 12 miles west of Tryon.

Nellie and Miles, and Mama and Daddy, certainly influenced Billie's life, and are included in her book. But no one touched Billie's life more than her little sister, Bertie. It started from the very beginning ...

"Bertie thinks she was special to have been the only one of us four kids born at the ranch, born with no doctor present and named after our dad. The folks had wanted and expected a boy, but they still named her after Dad, Alberta for Albert, thus the nickname Bertie. I must admit I envy her just a little for all of this ... "

For all the bickering, for all the one-upsmanship, the girls never made fun of each other. "We made fun of each other's horse," Billie laughed.

Bertie's horse was "a hammerhead" ... Billie's horse was "a parrot mouth" ... Bertie's horse was "a sway-back" ... Billie's horse was a " ..."

The girls trapped muskrats, picked up cow chips, milked cows, rode horseback to school, "borrowed" a pony and a goat.

They swung on ropes, they balanced on fences. "Hey, I only knocked her out once, maybe twice," Billie laughed.

"Bertie's all right now," she chuckled. "She's 88, and she's all right in the head."

Despite the early years of "fussin'" at each other, the two sisters are "hanging onto each other" as they age. "We're the only ones left, and we hold tight to each other," Billie said, on the day she dropped off copies of her book at the Norris House in McCook.

Billie writes, early in her book, about Bertie: "We are the only ones still alive, so no one can contradict us."

If she and Bertie start to disagree even now, Billie says, in her book, "We back up and talk around it." They agree they don't always remember things the same way. (Did Billie, indeed, tell Bertie to konk that teacher with the monkey wrench?)

Billie admits maybe she regrets all the fussing she and Bertie did. But not because she feels guilty about picking on Bertie, or for bossing her around all the time.

Billie writes: "As I look back, I wish so much we could change that part of our kidhood. It would have certainly made it easier for our mama."